Derek Tonn

Posted 16 August 2006 - 01:06 PM

Derek, you are so honorable. BitTorrent abounds with copies for 'testing' purposes. Also, always keep a few friends in college... doesn't Adobe offer a student discount?

Let me get on my soapbox for a moment. I've been a software developer, for over 10 years, developing mapping and geology software. From my perspective, I find it very disheartening to read posts of this nature. I don't understand the philosophy of not purchasing software that you can and will use to produce a map product for profit. So many people *chuckle* and say I'm only using it for testing purposes, yet continue to use the software for years and years. I hope that people will consider the ramifications of software theft and how it does impact those who spend years developing those products? If you don't want to pay for a product, don't use it.

BEN: Yes, I know there is a temptation for a LOT of folks to bend the rules and/or "borrow" software. However, I have a hard time not paying Adobe or anyone else what they are due for their products and services...as much as I know I will essentially only be using AI as a program to "translate" maps into a format that our clients can better-understand.

benbakelaar

Posted 16 August 2006 - 02:36 PM

...as much as I know I will essentially only be using AI as a program to "translate" maps into a format that our clients can better-understand.

Exactly. The problem here is actually proprietary formats (actually, is it? ). The program is worth $400 becahse of its myriad features, of which Derek is using one, and that the most basic. File->Save As. I have to say in that case I wouldn't pay for it unless it was an integral part of my business.

Hans van der Maarel

Posted 16 August 2006 - 03:40 PM

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That means the text you have is bigger than the text box you created. I usually only make a text box when I have to constrain text to a specific area. Alteratively you can just click once (not dragging) and have the cursor appear.

The thing is, the text was never placed inside a text box, but along a path in Illy 10. Now, in Illy 10 it looked great and it fit on the path. So suddenly, the same text along the same path with the same font, size, spacing and width is too big? And this happens for 50% of the texts on my map??? How on earth did this ever escape Adobe's QA process? Seriously!

Q: What can I do with *.cdr (Corel Draw Vector drawing file) files in Inkscape? I have got my images in *.cdr files and I would like to continue in *.SVG.

1. Open CDR file Corel Draw. Save it as CGM file. It will save only vector graphics. It will not save bitmap graphics. 2. Open CGM file in OpenOffice Impress. Copy to Open Office Draw and insert original JPG or another bitmap graphics. Save file as ODG And you can continue in Open Office Draw program.) 3. Select all (CTRL+A) 4. Export as SVG. 5. Open SVG file in Inkscape and correct mistakes if they appear.

Q: I exported an SVG file from Adobe Illustrator, edited it in Inkscape, and imported back to AI, but there my changes are lost!

That's because Adobe cheats. It creates a valid SVG, but apart from the SVG code it also writes to the file, in encoded binary form, the entire AI-format source file of the image. Inkscape, of course, edits the SVG part of the image and leaves the encoded binary untouched. But when you import the SVG file back to AI, it completely disregards the SVG code with its edits and reads directly from the encoded AI binary. Therefore, any SVG changes are lost. To work around it, in Inkscape open the XML Editor and remove the non-SVG elements (everything not with the svg: prefix in its name).

Rick Dey

Posted 16 August 2006 - 04:11 PM

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Path Type is the big issue. Their nifty new type engine that apparently gave graphic artists lot of new bells and whistles has given us nothing but grief. I know of a number of the beta testers (cartographic oriented) that sent repeated reports to them in CS and CS2 regarding the inability to maintain path text integrity. They were ignored or told that it wasn't that big a problem because most users don't have that much path type.

What I can't understand is how non-path type loses all baseline shifts when you tell it to not convert the type. It's like here's an option to use baseline offset, but don't expect it to really work because we're not going to support it.